The Maids of Paradise Part 53

"I think so.... I am learning from you."

"But you taught this creed to me!" she cried.

"No, you are teaching it to me. And the first lesson was a gift,...

your friendship."

"Freely given, gladly given," she said, quickly. "And yours I have in return,... and will keep always--always--"

She crushed the rose against her mouth, looking at me with inscrutable gray eyes, as I had seen her look at me once at La Trappe, once in Morsbronn.

I picked up my gloves and riding-crop; as I rose she stood up in the dusk, looking straight at me.

I said something about Sylvia Elven and my compliments to her, something else about the happiness I felt at coming to the chateau again, something about her own goodness to me--Heaven knows what!--and she gave me her hand and I held it a moment.

"Will you come again?" she asked.

I stammered a promise and made my way blindly to the door which a servant threw open, flung myself astride my horse, and galloped out into the waste of moorland, seeing nothing, hearing nothing save the low roar of the sea, like the growl of restless lions.

XVI

A RESTLESS MAN

When I came into camp, late that afternoon, I found Byram and Speed groping about among a ma.s.s of newspapers and letters, the first mail we circus people had received for nearly two months.

There were letters for all who were accustomed to look for letters from families, relatives, or friends at home. I never received letters--I had received none of that kind in nearly a score of years, yet that curious habit of expectancy had not perished in me, and I found myself standing with the others while Byram distributed the letters, one by one, until the last home-stamped envelope had been given out, and all around me the happy circus-folk were reading in homesick contentment. I know of no lonelier man than he who lingers empty-handed among those who pore over the home mail.

But there were newspapers enough and to spare--French, English, American; and I sat down by my lion's cage and attempted to form some opinion of the state of affairs in France. And, as far as I could read between the lines, this is what I gathered, partly from my own knowledge of past events, partly from the foreign papers, particularly the English:

When, on the 3d of September, the humiliating news arrived that the Emperor was a prisoner and his army annihilated, the government, for the first time in its existence, acted with promptness and decision in a matter of importance. Secret orders were sent by couriers to the Bank of France, to the Louvre, and to the Invalides; and, that same night, train after train rushed out of Paris loaded with the battle-flags from the Invalides, the most important pictures and antique sculptures from the Louvre, the greater part of the gold and silver from the Bank of France, and, last but by no means least, the crown and jewels of France.

This Speed and I already knew.

These trains were despatched to Brest, and at the same time a telegram was directed to the admiral commanding the French iron-clad fleet in the Baltic to send an armored cruiser to Brest with all haste possible, there to await further orders, but to be fully prepared in any event to take on board certain goods designated in cipher. This we knew in a general way, though Speed understood that Lorient was to be the port of departure.

The plan was a good one and apparently simple; and there seemed to be no doubt that jewels, battle-flags, pictures, and coin were already beyond danger from the German armies, now plodding cautiously southward toward the capital, which was slowly recovering from its revolutionary convulsions and preparing for a siege.

The plan, then, was simple; but, for an equally simple reason, it miscarried in the following manner. Early in August, while the French armies from the Rhine to the Meuse were being punished with frightful regularity and precision, the French Mediterranean squadron had sailed up and down that interesting expanse of water, apparently in patriotic imitation of the historic

"King of France and twenty thousand men."

For, it now appeared, the French admiral was afraid that the Spanish navy might aid the German ships in hara.s.sing the French transports, which at that time were frantically engaged in ferrying a sea-sick Algerian army across the Mediterranean to the mother country.

Of course there was no ground for the admiral's suspicions. The German war-ships stayed in their own harbors, the Spaniards made no offensive alliance with Prussia, and at length the French admiral sailed triumphantly away with his battleships and cruisers.

On the 7th of August the squadron of four battleships, two armored corvettes, and a despatch-boat steamed out of Brest, picking up on its way northward three more iron-clad frigates, and several cruisers and despatch-boats; and on the 11th of August, 1870, the squadron anch.o.r.ed off Heligoland, from whence Admiral Fourichon proclaimed the blockade of the German coast.

It must have been an imposing sight! There lay the great iron-clads, the _Magnanime_, the _Heroine_, the _Provence_, the _Valeureuse_, the _Revanche_, the _Invincible_, the _Couronne_! There lay the cruisers, the _Atalante_, the _Renaud_, the _Cosmao_, the _Decres_! There, too, lay the single-screw despatch-boats _Reine-Hortense_, _Renard_, and _Dayot_. And upon their armored decks, three by three, stalked the French admirals. Yet, without cynicism, it may be said that the admirals of France fought better, in 1870, on dry land than they did on the ocean.

However, the German ships stayed peacefully inside their fortified ports, and the three French admirals pranced peacefully up and down outside, until the G.o.d of battles intervened and trouble naturally ensued.

On the 6th of September all the seas of Europe were set clashing under a cyclone that rose to a howling hurricane. The British iron-clad _Captain_ foundered off Finistere; the French fleet in the Baltic was scattered to the four winds.

In the midst of the tempest a French despatch-boat, the _Hirondelle_, staggered into sight, signalling the flag-ship. Then the French admiral for the first time learned the heart-breaking news of Sedan, and as the tempest-tortured battle-ship drove seaward the signals went up: "Make for Brest!" The blockade of the German coast was at an end.

On the 4th of September the treasure-laden trains had left Paris for Brest. On the 5th the _Hirondelle_ steamed out towards the fleet with the news from Sedan and the orders for the detachment of a cruiser to receive the crown jewels. On the 6th the news and the orders were signalled to the flag-ship; but the G.o.d of battles unchained a tempest which countermanded the order and hurled the iron-clads into outer darkness.

Some of the ships crept into English ports, burning their last lumps of coal, some drifted into Dunkerque; but the flag-ship disappeared for nine long days, at last to reappear off Cherbourg, a stricken thing with a stricken crew and an admiral broken-hearted.

So, for days and days, the treasure-laden trains must have stood helpless in the station at Brest, awaiting the cruiser that did not come.

On the 17th of September the French Channel squadron, of seven heavy iron-clads, unexpectedly steamed into Lorient harbor and dropped anchor amid thundering salutes from the forts; and the next day one of the treasure-trains came flying into Lorient, to the unspeakable relief of the authorities in the beleaguered capital.

Speed and I already knew the secret orders sent. The treasures, including the crown diamonds, were to be stored in the citadel, and an armored cruiser was to lie off the a.r.s.enal with banked fires, ready to receive the treasures at the first signal and steam to the French fortified port of Sagon in Cochin China, by a course already determined.

Why on earth those orders had been changed so that the cruiser was to lie off Groix I could not imagine, unless some plot had been discovered in Lorient which had made it advisable to shift the location of the treasures for the third time.

Pondering there at the tent door, amid my heap of musty newspapers, I looked out into the late, gray afternoon and saw the maids of Paradise pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing across the bridge with a clicking of wooden shoes and white head-dresses glimmering in the dusk of the trees.

The town had filled within a day or two; the Paradise coiffe was not the only coiffe to be seen in the square; there was the delicate-winged head-dress of Faouet, the beautiful coiffes of Rosporden, Sainte-Anne d'Auray, and Pont Aven; there, too, flashed the scarlet skirts of Bannalec and the gorgeous embroidered bodices of the interior; there were the men of Quimperle in velvet, the men of Penmarch, the men of Faouet with their dark, Spanish-like faces and their sombreros, and their short yellow jackets and leggings. All in holiday costume, too, for the maids were stiff in silver and lace, and the men wore carved sabots and embroidered gilets.

"Governor," I called out to Byram, "the town is filling fast. It's like a Pardon in Morbihan; we'll pack the old tent to the n.i.g.g.e.r's-heaven!"

"It's a fact," he said, pushing his gla.s.ses up over his forehead and fanning his face with his silk hat. "We're going to open to a lot of money, Mr. Scarlett, and ... I ain't goin' to forgit them that stood by me, neither."

He placed a heavy hand on my shoulder, and, stooping, peered into my face.

"Air you sick, m' friend?" he asked.

"I, governor? Why, no."

"Ain't been bit by that there paltry camuel nor nothin', hev ye?"

"No; do I look ill?"

"Peaked--kind o' peaked. White, with dark succles under your eyes.

Air you nervous?"

"About the lions? Oh no. Don't worry about me, governor."

He sighed, adjusted his spectacles, and blew his nose.

"Mr. Speed--he's worriting, too; he says that Empress Khatoun means to hev ye one o' these days."

"You tell Mr. Speed to worry over his own affairs--that child, Jacqueline, for instance. I suppose she made her jump without trouble to-day? I was too nervous to stay and watch her."